Saturday, September 21, 2013

Everything old is new again...AGAIN!

The nearly catastrophic 1961 accident involving a nuclear weapon in Goldsboro, North Carolina, is well-known. So why is everyone suddenly treating the story as if it were brand-new? Look and see: The Guardian, the BBC, AP...

It is true that a new document, pertinent to this case, has just been released to the public. But the document itself is a rather sarcastic riposte, written in 1969 by a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, to an account of the incident published in Kill and Overkill by Ralph Lapp. Lapp's book appeared in 1962. Although his rendition of the Goldsboro incident contains errors, he put the basics of the story out there.

That's right: A book published while JFK was still breathing -- a book that was widely-reviewed and much-discussed -- openly relates a tale which is now being re-told as if it had been suppressed and secret for five decades. As near as I can tell, the newly-released document from 1969 contains little information not already on the public record.

I'm starting to become genuinely baffled by "Everything old is new again" syndrome. The "Goldsboro rediscovery" is not the only recent example. You may recall this post from last month...

Have you noticed the trend? All sorts of old spook news is being presented as if it were new spook news. The latest example is a Foreign Policy story hidden behind a pay wall. The headline (by way of Memeorandum) reads:

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran — The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand.

Isn't this rather familiar? Whole books have been written about American aid to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. First and foremost would be The Spider's Web by Allan Friedman, along with Kenneth Timmerman's The Death Lobby. Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror gets into this area.

A week or so ago, we were gifted with the breathtaking revelation that the CIA has admitted to its role in the coup against the Iranian leader Mosaddegh in 1953. My response: Cah-MON. Around the time of the Iranian revolution of 1979, there were, like, a zillion news stories which talked about the bad things the CIA did in that country.

One could also note a spate of news articles, published during the height of the Snowden controversy, which breathlessly "disclosed" that the NSA routinely trades intelligence with its British counterpart, GCHQ. Of course, these articles did little more than regurgitate information first published in the 1980s (and perhaps earlier.)

Allen Dulles had it right: "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country."

It's no wonder that slick operators like Glenn Beck have been able to brainwash a whole generation of ninnies into believing that liberals supported Hitler. It's easy to stand the historical record on its head in a country where nobody reads.

The 80s may be just yesterday to grizzlies such as you and me, Joseph, but they're not to everybody. This year's crop of college freshmen was six years old when 9/11 happened.

posted by Anonymous : 4:07 PM

I agree with anon. Watching the College Jeopardy final, three very bright college students were entirely stumped by this 20th century US political question: which two men followed each other in succession as VP, and then, POTUS? Neither Nixon nor Johnson got mentioned by any of them.

There's a reason why so many cultures prized their graybeards-- they're the only ones who remember what happened before the youngsters showed up.